Trade magazines are dead, long live trade magazines!
By Linda Forrest
One thing you can rely on in the media game is change. The media industry, as ever, has been aflutter this past week as trade publications both in North America and Europe either swallowed whole their counterparts in a high-profile merging of brands, or print editions of long-standing B2B trade publications announced their intentions of moving strictly online. In reaction, many proclaimed, once again, the death of the trade magazine.
There are various perspectives on why these shifts in the magazine world are taking place, including this detailed piece, written in a funerary tone, from Adweek’s editorial director and longtime prominent media figure, Michael Wolff. Meanwhile, as quoted in a Guardian piece that questions whether trade magazines have a shelf life,
David Levin, United Business Media chief executive, draws a comparison between the situation the trade press finds itself in today and 1912, “when there were a lot of blacksmiths about and we were about to get the motor car.”
